This summer’s Paris Olympics warrants a historical look at some of European Jewry’s athletic stars… and tragic losses
The Lost History of the Jews of Corfu
In memory of an ancient community snuffed out by the Holocaust.
Austria’s Dreyfus? The Story of Philippe Halsman, the Man Who Didn’t Murder His Father
Philippe Halsman took some of the most famous photos in the world – hundreds of images of iconic celebrities and pictures adorning the cover of Life magazine and museum walls. But before all this, Halsman was tried in Austria for the unimaginable crime of murdering his own father. Was he truly a cold-blooded killer, or was he an Austrian Dreyfus, persecuted solely for being Jewish?
Deep Dive: Bringing Jewish Cemeteries to Life
British author and academic Dr. Rachel Lichtenstein spent the past year working with seven different communities across Europe to bring old Jewish cemeteries alive through new and exciting initiatives, encouraging a phenomenal revival of Jewish history
The First, Last, and Only Female Hasidic Rebbe
Would you break all the traditions of your society, turn against the will of your family, and shatter all the boundaries that you have known to be true in order to follow your destiny? Chana Rochel Verbermacher did just that – breaking out of all the known gender stereotypes to make her own way in a world dominated by men, Chana decided to become the first, and only, Hasidic female Rebbe.
The Many Lives of the Synagogue El Transito
When Samuel Ha-Levi illegally built a synagogue in the provincial Spanish town of Toledo, no one could have known that it would one day become a church, then a military barracks in the Napoleonic war, a national monument, and finally a museum… but that’s just the beginning!
The First Jewish Book Printed in England
With the return of Jews to England in the 17th century, the developing community’s members surprisingly saw no need for a Jewish printing house. The first printed book was published decades later and only in the wake of a controversial internal dispute…
Revealed: Immigration Documents Filled Out by Austrian Jews During the Nazi Occupation
A trove of documents from Vienna’s Jewish community during the Anschluss period has been revealed to the public for the first time thanks to a collaboration between MyHeritage and the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People at the National Library of Israel. The collection contains 228,250 records, including scanned original documents submitted by Jews hoping to emigrate from Vienna. These documents, available on the Library’s website, provide extraordinary insights into the life of Vienna’s thriving Jewish community in the years 1938–1939
A Kol Nidre Prayer on the German Warfront in 1870
Even on Yom Kippur, German Jews in the 19th century were ready to sacrifice themselves for their homeland
Stolen by the Nazis: A Book’s Rediscovery in Jerusalem
The long journey of a book of Leviticus that was hidden in a Vienna basement during the Nazi era, before eventually making its way to the National Library of Israel’s Conservation and Restoration Lab…
